Heritage

Culture, Ethnicity, History

With permission from

Pallavi Dawson

here is our interaction. I was confused, truly, about a particular video that she had posted:

Pallavi wrote: If you as a group of people, as a demographic with shared ethnicity are constantly under threat throughout history, if you have had your grandparents and family wiped out in pogroms and holocausts then yes, I think Sam Harris would want you to be an ethno state too. Can we stop having a go at the Jews once and for all?

My reply: I’m sorry but what is so wrong with an ethno state? People like having an identity. People like being different. We are different. Its not a bad thing. The issue is respecting those differences. But also understanding that when you move into an area which has a heritage you can’t supplant your culture for what is already existing. THAT is colonialism, and imperialism. (Yet, I find it interesting how if someone from the global south moves into the 1st world it is not called colonialism if they demand these countries adhere to the cultural norms they left behind. Assimilation into the new country used to be expected. Now it is called “racist.”)

We aren’t going to all combine into one big human tribe, because we all have religions, histories, cultures, languages, heritages that are different and we like it that way.

Who is also going to dictate what is going to be the overarching culture we have to adhere to? Being against the ethno-state sounds rather fascist to me.

Pallavi Dawson

I’m sure Carl Benjamin (Akaad) wants England to be an ethno state. He conflates the trials we’ve had here with the experiences of the Jewish people throughout history, though.

I believe in English identity and I’m ok with being told I’m not English. That’s not racist. As long as my daughter and I are safe here, in England, I welcome people taking pride in their country. When it gets into actually racist territory then I’ll always speak out. I think Sam Harris (who Carl criticizes) would be on board with this but I get the feeling Carl wants me out of his country. In that case may we all just stay put in our country of birth, including Carl.

Just to add and make clear, I support what Sam Harris says about Israel and was making the point that Israel has every right to its identity. I think numerous times people wrongly assume I am against this. For some reason.

EKB

An Unimportant Woman🎗️

I understand what you were saying. Not to worry. I just couldn’t figure out what the issue was with this guy in the video. Honestly he sounds like a racist asshole.

Story- for the Jewish People it is not about the color of your skin or even where you come from. One of the most important stories we are told during our most holiest of days is the Story of Ruth. Who left Moab with her MIL Naomi and chose to become a member of the Jewish People. Once she accepted our ways, she became one of us. It did not matter her skin color, her ethnic background, how she was raised or where she was from. We call those converts now. In fact, it is so important for the Jewish People to recognize that what makes you a member of the Jewish People is the acceptance of our way of life that King David is a descendant of Ruth and so the messiah is a descendant of Ruth.

In many ways this is also what makes you an American. It doesn’t matter where you come from, your skin color or your ethnic heritage. What matters is a accepting our way of life, the laws of the land, adherence to the US Constitution. You do need to eschew any other nation when you take the oath of citizenship. Much like a convert to another religion.

Now in many ways then and what we have seen with the Jewish People as well, is that as the “ethno-nation” expands, things change, additions are made to culture. In Israel, all Jews celebrate mimouna, which is a Moroccan Jewish holiday at the end of Passover or eat sufganiot (donuts) at Hanukkah, which is a sephardic custom. But it is all Jewish and part of our culture as a whole, and who we are now.

In America we “Americanize’ foods, sayings, attitudes that people take with them from their old way of life and change them to fit into being American. Cultures, people grow and change. But the underlying concepts remain the same. (Well laws do change, grow and develop. Societies are not stagnant. Anyone who tells you they should be are simply ignorant of history)

Of course, genetically you do remain Jewish if you chose to practice another religion, but that too is mainly due to Jews being ghettoized, corralled and kept apart by the powers that be where they were exiled over thousands of years. Now Jewish DNA is a discussion for another day as well. But it still tells the story of Jewish Peoplehood. (In doing 23 and me, my children and I found out we are 98.6% Jewish with the rest either being North African or Italian.)

DNA can tell us where someone’s ancestors are from, and where they are indigenous so to speak. But that is not the only thing that characterizes a person, a culture, a nation or a heritage.

So it is hard for an American, for us, to see you as anything but British. To Americans, what would make someone British is the acceptance of British law, customs and way of life. It is adherence to freedom, dignity and understanding what was fought for over all those centuries to create the British state. The color of someone’s skin is an accident of birth. It is not what makes you British. It just so happens that during the time period in history the people that became Britain had white skin. So what. Just like during the time period in the making of the US the majority of people had white skin. So what?

(Just as an aside- I am not talking about what happened to the indigenous native population of the Americas in this conversation or about slavery. I am not ignorant of that history. So don’t leave nasty comments. Our conversation was about something else entirely.)

****

I do find this obsession about skin color rather interesting. Not in a good way though. This oppressor-oppressed crap (yes I am late to this party) that has poured out of the Soviet Union and has parasited itself into mainstream academia and education has rotted the brains of some otherwise intelligent persons. To make an immutable characteristic, such as skin color, the defining aspect of a personality is not only intellectually lazy, it is downright racist in and of itself.

Now that is not to say, that issues do not exist within societies all over the globe. Of course they do. You would have to be wholly devoid of any sense of reality to not see that societies can do better in every strata. But to say that racism is merely a sin of the industrialized nations (which is what the followers of this defunct Soviet philosophy does) is to wash over the histories of the global south. The human ability for cruelty and barbarism is something all societies share, no matter the level of development. These brutalities merely manifest themselves differently in different cultures and during different historical ages.

And no, you do not have to choose evil simply because cruelty was done to you. Simply because you were abused as a child doesn’t mean you get a pass if you abuse your own children. Humans have the ability to choose. That so many have decided to explain away barbarism because of a perpetrator’s area of birth, shows a lack of agency and the racism of low expectations. That so many have decided to deny history, culture and heritage (Islamism’s dream of a Jew-free world for example) in order to align with the wet dream of Jewish genocide shows a depravity not seen in 100 years.

On that note, I am also tired of the term “has a right to exist.” Fuck that shit. You, the self appointed “enlightened” of the world don’t get to decide if some nation gets to exist or not. Nations exist because they do. They like to exist. People like to belong within homogeneous groups. They like to be surrounded by others who are like them. So what?

That some overarching authority decides if a nation can and cannot exist is ridiculous. It may not be conducive to global economic interests for there to be many nations with laws and economic systems, but it doesn’t give some potentates the right to decide whether others around the globe get to come together to create a nation.

OK, after the last great world war, the powers that stood decided that they wanted to try to avert any kind of global catastrophe that they had just lived through so they expanded on the League of Nations and came up with the United Nations. Which has ended up as one of the most corrupt and useless international organizations on the planet. And yes, the United Nations did vote on the partition of the Palestine Mandate creating both a Jewish and Arab nation. (The Jews accepted the Arabs did not and began a war of genocide against the fledgling State of Israel.) But Israel doesn’t exist because of the UN. It exists because it won war and after war of extermination directed against it.

Much to the chagrin of those who truly did not care about whether the survivors of the Holocaust actually ended up surviving or not...

So because they couldn’t destroy Israel militarily these same malevolent forces came up with some new nonsensical political machinations. They come up with this bullshit called the “ethno-state.”

I have never been quite sure what the issue is, and it seems it is directed only at Israel. A nation reborn that is the nation state of the Jewish People. I don’t understand how that is any different than the nations of France, Russia, China, Japan or the over 20 Arab states (56 Muslim nations world wide). All of whom, cherish, love and honor their national histories, heritage, language, laws, majority religion, and ethnic nuances.

(They say that because Israel allows Jews from around the world to become citizens of the State of Israel simply because they were born with Jewish ancestry that is an ethno-state. But the nations of Spain, Germany, Italy, Poland to simply name a few also allow for that. Are they too ethno-states that have no right to exist? More here.)

Oh, the detractors say its because of “zionism” that Israel is different. They have decided to turn zionism into something it is not. These antisemites glomb onto a Soviet inspired modern day Protocols of the Elders of Zions (the conspiracy blood libel produced by the Tsars secret police after the Kishinev pogroms to detract from the worldwide condemnation of the slaughter) defintion of what it means to be a zionist.

Forming alliances with the Arab dictators and tyrants of the Middle East during the Cold War, the Soviets promoted 3rd world animosity and anti-colonialism to denigrate and deride Jewish national quest. They knew that Israel, was the barrier wall between Soviet/Russian control of the precious commodity of middle eastern oil and ruling the world. Sadly, this modern form of Jew- hatred is truly the only thing to have survived the fall of the Soviet Union.

The reality is that you do need to ask yourself of all the things to have outlived the Soviets, why is this blood libel the concept with legs?

Zionism, put simply, is merely the national movement of the Jewish People to rebuild a homeland in their indigenous lands. It in truth, is the only successful indigenous movement in history. And unlike the detractors would like you to believe, it is not a new phenomena. It is actually a national movement that goes back over 2500 years to the Babylonian diaspora. Political zionism, as envisioned in the 19th century is merely the latest manifestation of something the Jewish People yearned for since the destruction of Solomon’s Temple.

Psalm 137:5-6

If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand forget its skill!
⁶ Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
above my highest joy!

So lets break everything down.

Zionism is colonialist say Israel’s detractors. “Colonialism” defined by Merriam-Webster as “domination of a people or area by a foreign state or nation : the practice of extending and maintaining a nation's political and economic control over another people or area.”

On that note there is an interesting point made by Israeli intellectual Haviv Rettig Gur. He writes:

In other words, Zionism was a colonialist phenomenon in all respects and fully resembled other examples of modern colonialism – apart from the fact that it was a national movement, that it was not motivated by a desire for economic gain, that it arose out of Jewish suffering and was realized by people who may be defined as refugees, that the settlers had no colonial mother country, and that the bond with the Land of Israel was part of the traditional historical identity of the Jewish people.

In other words, not colonialist, but the expression of a displaced indigenous People.

Yes, I would say that Judaism is an ethno-relgion. But it is no different than any other religion that has rules that govern how societies are to be run, along with a belief in an omnipotent being.

Judaism is ancient. Jews are an ancient People. They existed long before the rise of the great empires of Babylon, Persia, Assyria, Ancient Greece or Rome, and yet the Jews are the ones still here. And much to the fury of the antiZionist, archaeology proves the history of the Bible, and Jewish indigeneity to the Land of Israel, as well.

Judaism does not fit into our modern political and religious categories, no matter how hard some Jews tried to make it fit. It is why the Reform movement came about in the first place in the 19th century. An attempt to make Judaism fit into the enlightenment landscape. This didn’t really stop the rise of Nazism, or Communist Judenhass did it?

So what does it all mean and where will this all lead?

Honestly, I do not have an answer. Modern societies have very little understanding of who they are and where they come from. They are taught that somehow those who support the freedoms found in the US Bill of Rights are the bad ones in the world. That those who want to do justice need to commit genocide against the world’s Jews. The modern world is upside down. I have no idea why.

A huge part of me also doesn’t care, why. I am not here to psychoanalyze everyone who has a bug up their ass about Jews, the US, or western freedoms. What I find really curious though is how quickly so many are happy to join with evil and how many of those have alot of international power.

“Be wary of those who call good evil and evil good.”

IT IS DAY 646 OF THE HOSTAGES BEING STARVED AND HELD IN THE TERROR DUNGEONS OF GAZA 🎗️

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